School Days Review:Why I Didn't Hate It

I finally finished School Days over the weekend, and I can't say I hated it, which surprised me. Now I certainly didn't love it, and I can totally understand why it is so universally hated. But I still enjoyed it...for the most part. I didn't like there even being a possibility that the heroine (main/crazy/severed head one) was raped by the best friend (Sawanaga). This was the most disturbing thing to me, followed by the scene with Kotonoha sailing out toward the horizon with Makoto...'s head. That was followed by the... dissection which was also preformed by Kotonoha, and finally came the actual death of Makoto which wasn't really disturbing in fact it was very satisfying. While all of these things are certainly jolting, but I could deal with them, crazy and disturbing as they were, they aren't as stomach turning and disgusting as rape/NTR of the heroine. I admit that this wasn't clear in the anime and it is possible that it didn't happen, but seriously even making it a possibility is taking it to far for me. Severed heads, fine. dissection, fine. Murder, fine. But rape/NTR? That's taking it to far. Maybe my priority are skewed, but that isn't something that should be in any anime and it made me very angry. Anyway aside from the obvious reasons for disliking it, you guys probably want to know why I liked it...didn't hate it. The answer is simple, it was new, different, and entertaining. These may not seem like the kind of things that would counter the many negative elements that are in the anime. But in my opinion as long as an anime is entertaining and keeps me coming back for more, it is a good anime. Now this anime is very flawed so I wouldn't rate it very high, but it was entertaining and as a bonus it was a new and different twist on the harem genre (or possibly a very well done melodrama, but lets not go into that). Those are my thoughts on School Days and my attempt at explaining why I didn't totally hate it, thank you for reading and...until next time, don't forget to read more manga :)